1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to Internet-based shopping and more particularly to shopping based on product categories and subcategories.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Internet-based shopping has grown into a major industry. Typical Internet-based shopping sites present a shopper with a wide variety of products when the shopper visits a shopping webpage. Within an interface associated with a typical Internet-based shopping site, the shopper (e.g., a user) chooses the products he or she wants to purchase and proceeds to pay for those products. Those products are then shipped to an address provided by the shopper.
Some Internet-based shopping sites are linked to a specific manufacturer or type of product and allow users to choose from only a limited array of products from that manufacturer of that type. Others are more general sites that allow users to select from a wide array of product types from a wide array of manufacturers. While some of these typical Internet-based shopping sites provide shoppers with a department store-like shopping experience where the sites present the shopper with the products of only large sellers or manufacturers, others provide shoppers with a more market-like shopping experience where the site presents the shopper with products from smaller or individual sellers or manufacturers. In any case, shoppers at Internet-based shopping sites are typically presented with a vast number of products from which to choose.
Some shoppers may be looking for a specific product, in which case, it is useful for a site to provide the shoppers with a tool for searching the vast number of products to find the specific product. If the user knows the name or model number, the Universal Product Code (UPC), or some other unique identifier for the specific item, a search function may search through the potential products for the one that matches that unique identifier.
In other instances, shoppers may only know a description of the product that may include a manufacturer name, name of the product type, or other descriptive terms for the product. Other shoppers may not have a specific product in mind when they visit the site, but rather they may be searching for a type of product. These shoppers may, for example, want to browse all products offered by a site or a subset of the products offered by a site to compare products of the specific type before they make a final purchase. In these cases, the search tool may allow the shopper to enter keywords to describe the product or type of product to search for products that match the entered keywords.
To facilitate such keyword searching, the site may associate each item with a plurality of keywords or descriptions. These keywords or descriptions are typically provided to the Internet-based shopping site by the seller or manufacturer of the item when the item is first listed by the site.